


Refracted, Reflected

by Oparu



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, mentions of Burnham/Tyler, post episode 13, this is a maternal interpretation of Georgiou & Burnham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 04:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13539792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: Michael brought Emperor Philippa back to Discovery, and she's not her captain. Despite that, there's a connection between them neither of them wants to let go. They're both grieving, and maybe under the Emperor's armor, they're more alike than they realize, each needing to be understood, to find the family they've lost.





	Refracted, Reflected

**Author's Note:**

> mentions of Burnham/Tyler, in a very angsty way, this deals with Michael feeling violated and betrayed and wanting to talk to her 'mother'. 
> 
> Many thanks to walkthegale and sambethe for all their help!!

Dr. Pollard shifts her feet, then finds a nervous smile in the corridor outside the stateroom where they’re keeping the Emperor. “Is she dangerous?”

  
“Only if we threaten her. I wouldn’t want to face her in a fight.” Michael takes a breath. Even if Philippa hates it, she’s alive. Part of her insists that this is a good place. That everyone can find their place here. There must be something Philippa can do that’s not domination and death. “I wouldn’t send non-humans in to talk to her, not until we know how she’ll react.”  
  
“Right.” Pollard nods to her nurse before studying the bruises darkening on Michael’s face. “If you don’t mind, we’ll examine you together.”  
  
“That’s fine.” Maybe she sighed too much, smiled a little too wearily.  
  
“What is it, Specialist?”  
  
“Over there, she’s my mother.”  
  
Pollard’s eyes go wide, and she pats her shoulder. “Guess we’re calling you princess then?”  
  
Michael doesn’t have time to say anything back. The security guards part and in they go.  
  
Georgiou- Philippa- the emperor lifts her head. (Michael won’t call her mother, but she can’t help thinking the word when she looks up at them). "Have you come to study your prisoner?”  
  
“No, this is Doctor Pollard, she needs to check you out, is that all right?”  
  
“So polite.” Philippa nods, acquiescing. She doesn’t stand, but there’s blood on her lip. “You should see to Michael first.”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
“You’re just as bruised as I,” Philippa insists.  
  
Doctor Pollard looks at them, eyes wide, because this conversation is not one that should be occurring with the ruler of the Terran Empire. This conversation is with a mom.  
  
“I’m fine,” Michael says, looking down, because she can’t look at that face. Too familiar and too different. “They can check me right after you. Do you want anything? Tea?” Do they like the same one? Would the Emperor also have a weakness for Andorian tea or would that be beneath her? Maybe they destroyed all the plants. Maybe they made Andorian slaves harvest it. She’s thinking too much.  
  
Pollard’s tricorder hums, taking the Emperor’s vital signs while Michael stands uselessly in front of the replicator.  
  
Philippa touches her belt, shifting to remove her armor, letting the doctor treat her. The replicator obediently synthesizes the tea Michael doesn’t remember asking for. Andorian black. Smoky, and spicy. Philippa’s favorite.  
  
She sets it down on the table and reaches out for the clasps of Philippa’s armor without thought. “I can’t take mine off by myself either.”  
  
“My slaves would do it.”  
  
“Is it all right if I-?”  
  
Philippa raises an eyebrow, as if amused that Michael here would take the place of a slave. “You may.”  
  
Pollard lifts her tricorder light to check Philippa’s eyes and Michael stops her. “She’s light sensitive. Everyone from that universe is.”  
  
Again, the doctor nods, turning down the light in her hand. “I’m just checking for concussion. You’ll need that too.”  
  
Philippa’s armor clicks free and Michael carefully lifts it over her head. It’s heavy and ornate, gold covering composite fibers designed to protect the wearer. The emperor’s is much heavier than her own, and without it, Philippa’s almost small in her black uniform.  
  
“Did he hurt you?” Philippa asks, reaching to help Michael with her armor in a manner so maternal that Michael’s chest aches.  
  
“He hit me less hard than you. Wanted me alive.”  
  
“Fortunately, now he is not.” Philippa sets Michael’s armor aside but then they’re staring at each other, too close, and she brushes the fresh bruise on Michael’s cheek. “No scars.”  
  
“I think they’re less common here.”  
  
Philippa removes her top, unzipping it down so that it’s only her undershirt, black and embroidered gold. She sits for the doctor, proud and straight. The bruises are just starting to darken on her arms, still red. Lorca came at her hard but there’s no weakness in her face. Her arms are like the Philippa she knows, muscular, strong, but the emperor’s are mapped with scars. The sharp ones must be knives, swords, and one along her shoulder that must have bled enough to run.  
  
“This is a soft place.”  
  
Doctor Pollard raises her eyebrows. “If only that were true.”  
  
Philippa eyes her, studying her with that emperor’s gaze. “Perhaps it is just the people.”  
  
“From what I’ve heard of your universe, that’s a compliment,” Pollard says, smiling a little.  
  
Somehow, the emperor smiles back. She could be Philippa when she does that. Michael knows that smile, and it aches just as much. The dermal regenerator hums and blue light starts healing the broken skin along Philippa’s arm.  
  
“Lorca did this?” Pollard asks, losing some of her fear. The Emperor is imposing, but not threatening, not at the moment.  
  
“And his henchmen.” Philippa turns her head, meeting Michael’s eyes. “But we ended him.”  
  
“He’s dead,” Michael explains for the doctor. “Really dead.”  
  
“And we never knew him, did we?”  
  
“Not the Lorca from this universe.”  
  
The emperor hisses when she moves her left arm, ever-stoic, so it has to hurt much more than her face gives away.  
  
“Torn ligament,” Pollard says. “Michael, would you?”  
  
Michael takes her arm, helping guide it into position so the doctor can heal it. “Sorry.”  
  
“For stranding me in a universe that is not my own or for destroying my empire?” That smile cuts into Michael’s chest like a phaser blast.  
  
“Not for that.” She’ll never be sorry for the former, and the latter, well...maybe now that rebellion can get a foothold, start fighting back in the power vacuum the Charon’s destruction will leave behind.  
  
“Never for that,” Philippa repeats, and the emotion between their eyes could be cut with her sword.  
  
She can imagine it, calling her mother, wanting this woman to be proud of her, to eat dinner with her each night and talk about everything Michael fears. Part of her just wants to be closer, to shut her eyes and hug her like Philippa did.  
  
Her captain.  
  
Philippa moves her arm, checking her fingers and the elbow joint that no longer hurts. “Thank you.” She tilts her head towards Michael. “Now her.” Michael barely has time to breathe before the emperor slips off her tunic, guides her own abused arms free of the fabric. Her head swims a little, maybe she moved it too fast and the emperor and Pollard move with one mind.  
  
“Look at me, Michael,” Philippa says, all soft now. “Look at my eyes.”  
  
Pollard’s light follows, but Michael can only look at her.  
  
Captain. Mentor. Emperor. Killer.  
  
Mother.  
  
“You have a slight concussion.”  
  
“My head is much harder than yours, it seems,” Philippa jokes. “Look at me.”  
  
Keep looking at her.  
  
Don’t blink.  
  
“This was her favorite tea, wasn’t it?” Philippa asks, holding her tea in her left hand, Michael’s chin in her right.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I thought so.” She takes a sip, then smiles, distracting while Pollard starts treating the concussion with gently whirring medical devices. “You went to it without thinking.”  
  
“I knew her.” _I know you, except I don’t. I can’t._  
  
Michael shuts her eyes for a moment. As the adrenaline wears off, her head aches. “Doesn't seem fair, Lorca threw you into the throne and I’m the one who gets a concussion.”  
  
“Perhaps it was not from him.” The emperor’s words are soft, but anger lies beneath. Lorca took her, did something to her. Made her love him in a way that turns Michael’s stomach.  
  
And her mother’s.  
  
“You’re lucky we won.”  
  
“I had a good plan.”  
  
Philippa smirks, and her pride glows harsh in a way the captain’s never did. “You mean if I had listened to you, I’d still have my ship.”  
  
“Nah, we needed to blow that up. Your reactor was destroying all life in the universe.”  
  
“Well, if Stamets wasn’t dead, I’d kill him.” That casual menace makes the doctor shudder.  
  
Michael can picture his slow death. An agonizer booth, or perhaps eaten alive by his mycelium crop: it would be cruel, perhaps not unjust. Very not Starfleet.  
  
“All right, specialist, you need to take it easy, try to stay out of fistfights for a few days. Emperor, your injuries are mostly superficial. You’ll heal up just fine.”  
  
Of course, she knows that and nods to the doctor in polite dismissal. In her universe, she probably doesn’t say thank you, so Michael does it for both of them.  
  
“Thank you, Doctor.”  
  
“Take it easy,” Pollard warns, stern and caring.  
  
Philippa’s eyes echo that sentiment. “I shall see to it that she does.” She touches Michael’s shoulder, brushes against her. Michael shivers, not from the touch, but because she’s home. This is her Discovery, her crew, her soft universe of hope and equality, but Philippa’s here. Not hers, but one so close to her that she just wants to curl up against her and shut her eyes.  
  
To her own amazement, she does, the emperor pulls her close like a child and they sit back, Michael’s head on her shoulder.  
  
“At least one of you stayed free of him.”  
  
“Small victory.”  
  
“One I will happily celebrate.” Philippa drinks her tea with her free hand, the other lazily brushing against Michael’s bare skin. It’s far more intimate than things usually were with her captain. They were friends, Philippa was her mentor and yes, she’d cried in her arms, but this is different.  
  
Maternal, safe. She shouldn’t. This is not her captain. She’s closer, maybe even more dangerous because Michael has so little fight left. She survived the other universe, made i home, but Ash is here, not dead, and she doesn't know how to deal with that. With him, with her feelings. It was easy to bury over there, on the flagship, in her armor, but now she's bare.

Philippa finishes her tea and sets the cup on the table. Her fingers linger on the ceramic. Michael drifts on the edge of consciousness, body exhausted, mind swimming.

"Everything is so utilitarian here, you're too subtle with your ideas of beauty."

"That is not the cup of an emperor," Michael says, opening her eyes. "Philippa had a set from Andor, hand carved, exquisite. You'd like those better."

"And they are gone with her."

In the silence, Philippa's fingers move along her neck, through her hair. "If Lorca did not hurt you, who did?"

"What? How do you-?" Turning to look at her, Michael finds her face when the emperor starts to smile.

"I knew my daughter, so I know you. Tell me."

Again trying to protest, Michael is hushed.

"What else do I have to do here?" Philippa touches her face, and Michael's heart rushes to Amanda, and her kindness. Her adoptive mother is so far removed from this woman the comparison almost seems unfair, but she aches for that kind of surrender, to be understood without effort.

"I fell in love."

"A most dangerous endeavor."

"He tried to kill me."

Philippa nods again, safe and soft. "Several of my lovers have. Some were worth it, others were not."  

Michael wants to ask. To say the hell with it and break out the good Saurian brandy and listen to what it's like to have sex without losing your heart each time you touch him. Philippa wouldn't be broken by her lovers, wouldn't doubt, wouldn't lost herself in the wrong one.

Maybe she wouldn't love but- that's not it. That's not her. She's tough, tougher than duranium, but she's not isolated. Not afraid like Michael is.

So she tells her, gently, softly, and Philippa gets tea from the replicator, and argues with it until she gets the biscuits she wants and michael starts from the beginning, her captain's death, the trial, prison, coming back to a world that hated her (and should hate her). Though she scoffs at the idea of her wanting to make peace with Klingons, Philippa listens. An suddenly it's not hard to say. She finds words for the aching, lothing in her heart, the betrayal she can't think of without her stomach twisting. She made love to a Klingon, one who lied and murdered, not the Firewolf, strangely enough, Michael can almost imagine that version of him, noble, determined. That man she could have loved. This Voq is evil.

And she let him touch her. She sets down her tea and retreats to the replicator for something stronger. Something to take the edge off the crawling of her skin. She settles on whiskey, sharp, not smooth, something with bite.

Philippa takes a sip and makes a face, scowling at her glass as if it contains beetles in the liquid. "No wonder you're all so soft, your whiskey is abominable."

"I'm sorry." Michael shouldn't laugh. She's confessing her love for a Klingon spy to the murderous counterpart of her captain, but her chest finally has enough lightness to move. She can breathe again.

"You should tell me that it's better than the cold embrace of death, so I can tell you that it certainly is not." She downs the rest of her whiskey in a gulp, scrunches her face up and she should be Philippa when they had to eat those terrible grubs on Uzok IV. They had exceptional nutritional value, but they were disgusting. No matter what Saru said.

"You cannot think of yourself as pure or impure," Philippa starts, setting down her tumbler and reaching for her tea to cleanse her mouth. "You cannot be tainted by your lovers, nor dragged down by their failure to be worthy of you. You are the indomitable steel in the heart of the forge, and they are what burns away."

She had the same look when she wiped Lorca's blood from her sword, and Michael should fear her and the death in her eyes, but she's drawn to Philippa and her safety, her confidence. "What matters is you, not him, not his life or death."

Amanda would say the same, with less murder in her tone. Tilly- she has to tell her, find words for her confession. Maybe Stamets will be easier, but he's lost Hugh. they've all lost.

And Michael gained.

"Thank you."

Philippa studies her, strokes her cheek again. "My Michael would have put a dagger to my throat and told me she could chose her own companions."

That's a joke, hopefully.

"I can't."

"You can't yet," Philippa corrects. "You must give yourself room to fail, to rise above. That is how we triumph."

Michael has nothing left to insist that she can barely drag herself up, much less overcome, but she clings to Philippa's confidence, allowing it to take the place of her own. "Maybe that's how you'll find a place here. Give yourself room to fail, now rise above. See what life can be like without looking over your shoulder."

"The Federation--" Philippa rolls her eyes again. "Compassion, kindness, these are more insidious than any rebellion."

"You might have more in common with us than you think." Michael's eyes sting, and she needs a shower, to slip away and curl up in bed and somehow try to process all of this.

"Perhaps." Philippa returns to the sofa, looking out at the stars, giving Michael space to disappear.

Philippa's shift in gaze means Michael can blink back her tears without an audience, and Philippa knows, she must know.

"I still love her," she says, her voice crackling like shattered glass. "Even after her betrayal. I love my Michael, I always will. I can only imagine that what your Philippa felt was just as undimmed for you. She probably forgave you." She finishes the last with a sneer, turning from the stars to shake her head. "I would not."

"I don't deserve it."

"She'd say you do." Philippa tilts her head, leans forward, her hands on her knees. "Since you adored her so much, perhaps you should listen to her."

Michael turns, fleeing her presence because she can't run from herself. She's right, of course she's right, she's her captain, mentor, _mother_.

 

 


End file.
